


On Earth

by Unsentimentalf



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-11
Updated: 2019-10-11
Packaged: 2020-12-09 05:53:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20989913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unsentimentalf/pseuds/Unsentimentalf
Summary: He's asleep on an alien spaceship half a galaxy away from Earth; why should he dream of hawthorn berries?





	On Earth

The path is clear in front of him; the trodden grass darker and shorter than the rough tussocks to either side and worn in places to wet mud. Everything is wet though it isn't quite raining. Not everything- inside his heavy laced boots his feet are dry. 

He looks up, to the light filtering through the low, featureless grey-white cloud cover, a little brighter to his right. There's a sun out there somewhere, behind the sparse trees, behind the cloud. Leaves are still mostly green but there are berries on the bushes, scarlet in warning or temptation. Early autumn, and he's certain of the name of the sun that he can't see. He's on Earth. 

That's not possible. He's dreaming, or at least he hopes he is. Any alternatives are likely to be unpalatable. 

His trousers are made of a heavy cotton that won't dry well. He's wearing a coat in an even heavier green fabric that seems as if it will be barely waterproof, but apparently it's held up so far. He's also wearing a hat, a wide brimmed one. He touches the brim sticking out in the front. Wet, of course.

The is a stream to his right, ten foot across, fast flowing and barely contained by its banks. Occasionally lumps of uprooted vegetation rush past. In spate, and he wonders about dreaming a word which he hasn't had cause to recall for many years. 

There are other words. Sycamore. Willow. Ash. Nettle and bramble. The red berries on the twisted bushes are hawthorn, edible but not particularly nice. He's asleep on an alien spaceship half a galaxy away from Earth; why should he dream of hawthorn berries?

He forgot all this, purposefully, when he moved into the Dome. He had quickly learned that Outside was not something you spoke about, not with the teachers, not with the children. Nobody wanted to know that you knew what hawthorn berries tasted like. It only made you a target. Better to forget, to replace knowledge of the pinnations of ash and the long curls of willow leaves with the structure of quantum cells and the proofs behind FTL drives. 

This dream is unsettling him. He wants to wake. He chooses to wake. 

He is still walking beside the stream.

He stops walking. That is under his control, at least. There's not the slightest breeze to move the leaves. The birds he can hear are hidden in the vegetation. Only the stream rushes impatiently onwards in the same direction as he had been going. 

What dream logic has brought him here? He's not carrying anything so he's not hunting. He doesn't feel as if he's being hunted, either. He's had plenty of dreams like that, but not this one. There might well be fruit at this time of year more palatable than haws, but he's got nothing to collect it in. All he can see at the moment are the last of the year's blackberries looking well past their best. He is just here, not hungry, not thirsty, not tired, standing on a path by a stream in a Northern Hemisphere temperate zone on Earth on a wet day in autumn. Outside. 

It starts to rain lightly. He looks back but there's just more grass and trees and the stream. He thinks it's getting gloomier, not just because of the rain. Dream or not, he doesn't want to be out after dark, not without a torch and next to a stream he could potentially drown in. Someone or something has used this path daily, given the state of the grass. It must go somewhere. At least it might go somewhere if it's not just an animal track. He starts walking again.

How old was he when they brought him in? Six, maybe seven, he thinks. Young enough to adapt. Young enough to believe what they told him about the adults. Old enough not to trust again. Is that what this dream is about? No, dreams aren't about anything, not like that. Images and emotion from the past but not like this, not a dark line of trees in the distance marking the edge of woodland across the path, coming closer with every stride. There is no illogic to this dream apart from its existence. 

He walks for a while. It gets noticeably darker. With some difficulty he pulls the sleeve of the coat and the thick woollen garment underneath it far enough up his wrist to check. No chronometer. No teleport bracelet. His stride gets faster. He's in the wood now, in the gloom of twilight. The path twists round trees and weaves past bushes but he can still hear the stream on his right over the patter of raindrops high up in the canopy. Most of the direct rain doesn't get through to him but his heavy trousers are soon saturated from pushing past the soaking wet vegetation. 

The clearing appears in front of him with no warning. He comes around a tree and it's there, maybe fifteen feet across. There are old tree stumps sticking up between the patches of sparse grass. The stream has reappeared to form a noisy boundary. 

At the far end, barely visible in the last of the light, there is a construction of logs and brushwood. A hut, he supposes he must call it. As he approaches, a dark entrance can be made out, under three foot high and narrow. If he were to enter it would be doubled over and squeezing his body sideways. Not an appealing thought given that he doesn't know what or who is in there. 

Staying outside isn't particularly appealing either. The comfort of knowing that this is just a dream has dissipated somewhere in the last half hour, driven away by the very real discomfort of being wet and filthy.

He walks up to about eight foot of the entrance. "Hello! Anyone at home?"

"I am!" The call comes hollow but definite from inside the hut.

That wasn't what he is expecting at all. He eyes the doorway with even more suspicion. That voice doesn't sound anything like a hut dweller. 

"Come out, then," he suggests.

"It's wet out there. Why don't you come in?" 

Now he knows what the voice sounds like. It is, after all, a dream. Anyone can turn up anywhere. "Blake? Is that you?"

"Avon?"

"Yes." He eyes the entrance again. "Is it safe in there?"

"As far as I can tell."

That will have to do. He squeezes himself inside. 

The only light is the dusk behind him, and it’s not enough to make out anything inside. "Blake? I can't see you."

"I'm straight in front of you."

The whole thing is barely eight feet across and not high enough for a man to stand. He tries anyway, trips over Blake's legs, falls with a curse and pulls himself onto his hands and knees to scramble to a place against the rough back wall, next to the man already sitting there. 

"Where are we?" he demands. 

"I hoped you might know. It's a planet with vegetation of some sort; that's as far as I've got. "

"Don't you recognise your own planet of origin?"

"Earth? I suppose it could be. The gravity feels about right. I don't remember it being nearly this wet though."

"How often were you out of the Dome?"

"Twice," Blake admits.

"Well, then. You can take my word for it. It's Earth. Or at least a dream version of Earth."

The dark shadow beside him shifts. "You think we're dreaming?"

"I think I'm dreaming."

"So I'm a figment of your imagination? I could tell you that I'm not but I don't imagine you'll listen."

That strikes him as particularly unambitious. "You might at least make the attempt. How did you get here, for a start?"

"I've no idea. I just found myself sitting in this place."

"And you didn't try to leave?"

" I had a quick look outside but there were no roads and I'm not dressed for the rain."

He reaches sideways. His hand encounters thin silk and rather more of Blake than he'd anticipated.

"What are you doing?" He can't tell if Blake is annoyed or just startled.

"Finding out what you're wearing."

"You could just ask. Even figments of your imagination have some dignity, you know."

"So you're not real."

"Of course I'm real. I don't know what's got into your head. This place seems to have you spooked."

He wishes that he could see Blake's face. "Being here is impossible. Doesn't that bother you?"

"The ship's screwed with our minds once already. There was nothing to stop it doing it again."

Liberator. Of course. It doesn't explain why, or how, but at least he has a who, or more accurately what. How could he not have thought of the alien ship's powers earlier? It's intensely annoying that Blake's ahead of him. Although since Blake's just part of this dream, it's he who thought of it really.

"How about you?"

"I was on a path, about a mile away. I walked here. That's all."

"I'm guessing that you're not wearing pyjamas then," Blake says. "That makes this more likely to be my dream than yours."

"It isn't your dream." He's getting irritated now. "I am definitely experiencing this, whatever 'this' may be."

"Maybe it's both of us then," Blake suggested. 

That seems unlikely to him, but there's no point arguing about it with a figment of his imagination. 

He shivers; either this coat has let water in or there's a layer of cold sweat against his skin. His trousers are wet through. It's not as cold in here as out there but he's still uncomfortable. 

"I'm going to strip off," he says. "I don't suppose you happen to have some dry clothes with you?"

"If I had, I'd be wearing them," Blake says. "If it gets much colder I'm going to turn to ice."

"It's just a dream," he says, as much for his own benefit as Blake's.

"Can you be sure of that? What if the ship brought us back to Earth and teleported us down here?"

"We're not wearing teleport bracelets,"

"Maybe Liberator doesn't need them. Maybe someone on the ship teleported back with them before we woke up."

"Dreams always try to persuade you that they are real," he says, somewhat dismissively. He's unlacing his boots and easing his feet out with some difficulty. 

He remembers doing this. Not when he was in the Dome; he never got wet feet there. Not on the handful of planets they've visited in the two months or so since they escaped from the London; the clothes from the wardrobe room are made from fabrics which always keep you dry and come off smoothly. Before all of that. Two pairs of woollen socks; the first peel off somewhat wet, the second are mostly dry, as he knows they will be. He leaves the second pair on.

The coat is fastened with wooden pegs. Toggles; like the other words it comes from nowhere. He fumbles them open and drags it òff. He is about to put it down by his side when he remembers the silent man beside him. 

"Take this. It's not too wet on the inside and it should at least trap some body heat."

"Thank you," Blake says. It's got dark now but he can hear the coat flap as Blake manoeuvres into it. 

He thinks of something else. "I want it back if we go outside."

"You'll get it back," Blake's tone is short but that might be the cold. 

Underneath the coat is a thick woollen jumper, damp round the cuffs but otherwise it feels OK. He pulls it off and undoes the sweaty shirt below it. That's where the clammy chill is coming from. He strips it off and puts the jumper back on. 

Trousers, finally. The laced flies were under the coat and aren't very wet but his hands are cold and clumsy. He's rather glad that it's dark as he wriggles inelegantly from side to side to get out of the wet fabric. He gets them off eventually and scrubs at the cold numb flesh of his legs with the balled up shirt. 

"When you say pyjamas," he says finally to Blake, "do you mean your pyjamas, from the ship?"

"Yes. Why?"

Years of caution make him hesitant to reveal anything about his past, even in a dream or an alien-induced hallucination, but he knows this has to be significant. "I was dressed in clothes all made from natural materials. Rather like the Feral communities wear. " 

"That's odd. I suppose this hut is Feral too, if we're really on Earth. It's grotty enough."

He automatically jumps to his people's defence. "Ferals live a great deal more comfortably than this. They have proper homes, at least until the soldiers burn them down."

"I don't know much about them, " Blake says. "I don't even know if there are any left."

Nor does he. It isn't a subject he has ever wanted to be caught showing an interest in. 

The voice of the man beside him says "To be honest, I've never really understood them."

He's pretty sure that Blake's just talking to keep his mind off the cold and dark. When he says nothing Blake continues.

"Generous Settler packages become available all the time. They could live on a wilderness planet just the way they do on Earth, but without all the trouble with the authorities."

Without ash or sycamore, either, he thinks. There is only one Earth and it is home. Instead of that he says "I thought you were in favour of individual freedoms." 

"I'm not sure those freedoms should extend to bringing up your children out in the wilds, in poverty, disease and ignorance."

He remembers the tests at the children's home, before they fostered him out. He hadn't dropped a mark on the maths and reading but they decided he needed remedial lessons in civics and computing. The former was just rote learning, the latter mostly getting used to using the device interfaces that the other children had been playing with since toddlerhood. He didn't need extra lessons in either for long. 

"In the Domes they get suppressants in the food and water and a life on minimum credits. You think that's better?" 

"Maybe not," Blake concedes. "Now I think about it, we ought to find out more about the Ferals, if there still are any. Perhaps we could persuade them to be allies."

Cannon fodder for Blake's revolution. With any luck he won't find them. 

"What the hell was that?" 

He's rather pleased to have Blake startled out of that conversation. "Wolf," he says without wondering whether he should admit to knowing. He can hear several of them, close. The howls are familiar and exotic at the same time.

"Will they attack us?"

He's not six years old any more. "No."

"Is they anything else out there that will?"

"If you see a bear, try not to annoy it. Otherwise, you've only got to worry about humans."

"And the cold," Blake says.

He doesn't recall how cold autumn nights might get. He remembers fishing in endless summer dusks and following deer tracks with the moonlight bright on the white snow, but he doesn't remember much about autumn but the branches heavy with fruit and the colours of the turning leaves. Nothing that will tell him how to keep them both from dying of exposure out here, assuming this isn't just a dream.

If there's a moon up it's behind the cloud cover. It's far too dark to start walking anywhere, even if he could persuade a born and bred Dome dweller to come out among the howling wolves. Hearing the rain again he wonders how watertight the roof is. 

How can he not know whether he's dreaming or not? It's been going on far too long for a dream, except that maybe it hasn't. Maybe a blanket fell off his bed thirty seconds ago and his sleeping unconscious has just invented this whole bizarre backstory to explain why his legs are cold. 

This strikes him with the force of absolute certainty. Of course that's what's happening. He'll wake shortly, reassemble his bedclothes, tell Zen to increase the room temperature and go back to sleep. 

"Would you object if we sat a bit closer together?" Blake's voice is a little shaky.

So it's going to be one of those sort of dreams, is it? That should warm him up, anyway. Dream subconsciousnesses are notoriously sexually indiscriminate, pairing their owners up with anyone that comes to mind. He moves close to Blake, finding to his annoyance that the coat is now between him and the thin silk.

"We could have sex," he suggests. "That would warm us up."

Blake makes a small choking noise. "You're not serious."

"Why not? You must be wearing silk pyjamas for a reason."

There is a silence, then Blake says, "Let's take this a bit slower. I could kiss you."

He approves. They kiss for some time until he gets impatient with what little flesh he can reach. He pulls back a little. "I'm still cold."

"So am I," Blake says. "Do you really want to do this?"

"Of course." He's got an erection now and he hates waking up unsatisfied. 

"That's odd." 

"What is?" Blake nuzzles his neck between words. They are lying on the hard ground floor of the hut, huddled together under the jumper with the coat over their legs. It’s rather pleasant despite being incredibly uncomfortable,

"I usually wake up before now."

"I do too, I suppose," Blake says. "I'm not in any hurry to wake up right now though."

"Of course you aren't," he says. "I wonder what the real Blake would make of this. I imagine he'd be appalled." 

The body wrapped around his tenses. "What do you mean?"

"Well, there's not much chance that he'd be as obliging as my imagination. I suspect he's probably a bit strait laced when it comes to sex."

"You think I'm just part of your dream." Blake says flatly.

"Of course you are. Blake wouldn't really do any of this."

"Shit," Blake says. And again, more forcefully, "Shit! How the fuck could you do this to me, Avon? I told you I wasn't a bloody figment of your imagination!"

The naked flesh against his is quivering with anger. It feels all too real, but it can't be.

"I'm asleep!" he insists. "We can't share a dream! It's impossible."

"After the last few weeks do you really think that you understand everything that Liberator can do?" Blake demands.

He doesn't, of course. The rain thunders down, he's trapped in the dark with a man shouting at him. The wolf pack is closer now and its howls more malevolent. The dream has slid, as dreams do, into nightmare. 

He closes his eyes, trying to ignore Blake's further recriminations, and tells himself over and over to wake up, a little more frantically with every iteration, and finally, finally, he opens his eyes to the dim glow of his quarters. 

“Off!” he shouts at the wail of the alarm which sounds just a little bit like a wolf howling; now the only sounds are the faint engine hum and the pounding of blood in his ears. His bedclothes are in a tangle on the floor. What a fucking awful dream. 

He showers, dresses and heads out to the galley for a soothing mug of chocolate. He's late to his shift, the half full mug still in his hand.

“Overslept?” Blake asks.

He brings himself to look straight at the man. Blake’s hair is wet, which is hardly surprising; he often showers before a shift. “Were we in any hurry?”

“I suppose not. We’re thinking of going to Kacatuli. There’s a small science station there. Gan reckons we could do with some standard medical supplies, just in case we can’t rely on the ship.”

He calls details of the planet up to his console. “It’s got a lot of weather,” he says, watching Blake.

“What sort of weather?”

“Rain, mainly.” 

“Rain’s not a problem, is it?” Blake’s frowning at him. “As long as it’s just water.” 

“How often have you been outside the Dome on Earth?” he asks.

Blake shrugs.” Four or five times I suppose? All right, I grant you that I don’t know much about weather. Is this rain going to be an issue or not?”

“Not really an issue,” he says. “Not as long as we dress for it.” He finishes the chocolate; it’s not hot any more but it is still sweet. Just a dream, and already the details are fading. Trees and rain and the warmth of Blake’s body and wolves howling; it will all be gone soon. 

Around him Liberator’s alien hum seems briefly louder, as it does sometimes, then everything is quiet again.


End file.
